Planning Commission approves two more Rowan data centers
The Frederick County Planning Commission on Wednesday approved site plans for two new data centers on the Quantum Loophole campus near Adamstown, bringing the total number of active data center projects on the campus to four.
The site plans approved on Wednesday were for Bauxite II and Bauxite III, both of which are slated to be developed by the Colorado-based company Rowan Digital Infrastructure.
Rowan previously received Planning Commission approval for two other site plans — one for the original Bauxite data center and another for a substation to serve that data center. Those site plans were approved in January and August, respectively
The first company to receive site plan approval for a data center project on the Quantum Loophole campus was the Texas-based Aligned Data Centers in May 2023.
On Wednesday, the Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve the site plan for Bauxite II, which will consist of four data center buildings and a handful of auxiliary buildings, plus parking, on 111.5 acres.
Planning Commissioners Sam Tressler III, Carole Sepe, Tim Davis, Craig Hicks, Mark Long and Joel Rensberger all voted to approve the site plan for Bauxite II with conditions. Commissioner Barbara Nicklas was absent.
The Planning Commission also voted to approve with conditions the site plan for Bauxite III, which will consist of three data center buildings, an auxiliary water building, a guard booth, water storage facilities and parking on 55 acres.
Both Bauxite II and Bauxite III would be served, at least initially, by the FirstEnergy Sage Substation already planned for the Quantum Loophole campus.
Rowan representatives have said the company eventually plans to seek approval for another substation that will be adjacent to the Bauxite II project.
Kraig Walsleben of Rodgers Consulting told the Planning Commission on Wednesday, said:
When that substation comes in, that will then become a direct link of power,
“And then the initial link from Sage to [Bauxite II] would go away.”
The vote on Bauxite III was the same as the vote on Bauxite II, except that Sepe abstained.
Before the vote, Sepe said she was generally supportive of the site plan for Bauxite III, but felt the application should have included information about how Rowan would meet the state’s soil management regulations.
Sepe said she did not have the same concern about the plan for Bauxite II because that site is not within the soil management area of Quantum Loophole’s campus like the Bauxite III site is.
Chris Wu, Rowan’s director of site origination and development, said in an interview on Wednesday that the company is working with the Maryland Department of the Environment on an Environmental Management Plan for Bauxite III.
With all three Bauxite data centers approved, members of the public and the Planning Commission noted that nearly all of the potable water allotted for the first phase of development on the Quantum Loophole campus has now been divvied up.
According to the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO) agreement signed between Quantum Frederick and the county, the first phase of development on the site is limited to projects whose total combined cooling water demand does not exceed 1.3 million gallons per day.
A table included in the site plan application indicates that Bauxite I and Bauxite II will each require 392,000 gallons of water per day for cooling purposes. Bauxite III will require 297,000, for a total of 1.081 million gallons per day.
Aligned does not plan to use water to cool its data center on the Quantum Frederick campus, The Frederick News-Post has reported.
The Quantum Frederick APFO agreement requires Quantum to construct a system to bring wastewater from the Ballenger-McKinney Wastewater Treatment Plant for cooling before moving forward with any projects that would cause the total cooling water demand for the campus to exceed 1.3 million gallons per day.
Kevin Sellner of the group Fellowship of Scientists and Engineers said in his public comments on Wednesday,
Quantum put that forward as a good-faith promise,
“We must hold them to it, because we won’t be able to meet anything beyond 1.3 million gallons per day until we get that non-potable water delivery ensured,” he continued.
Steve Black, an Adamstown farmer who is the president of the nonprofit Sugarloaf Alliance, said the Planning Commission should be skeptical about the water estimates provided by Rowan in its site plan application.
He said it is the commissioners’ responsibility to determine whether a particular project could push Quantum’s total water demand over the limit, which they could not do without more information about how the estimates were calculated.
Black said,
There is no data to substantiate the water allocations for this facility,
“It’s just a number that came from nowhere.”
Walsleben responded to Black’s comments by saying
The suggestion that someone’s going to invest a billion dollars into a building and not have an idea as to how much water is going to be consumed is a bit naive.
Some members of the Planning Commission asked Rowan’s representatives about how the company and the eventual tenants of its data centers would plan to meet their energy needs without harming the surrounding community.
Gary Cudmore, Rowan’s vice president of sustainable engineering and construction, said data centers typically rely on either electricity or water-based cooling systems.
Cudmore said the tenants for the Bauxite data centers plan to use
More water and less electricity
to cool their machinery. Any water left over from one day would be stored in tanks for days when more water is needed, he said.
Sepe and Rensberger in particular questioned why Rowan did not attempt to incorporate solar into the designs of any of the Bauxite data centers.
Sepe said,
In all that footprint, there’s capacity for a whole bunch of solar, but you’re not putting that on this project,
Cudmore said the tenants for the Bauxite data centers are averse to the risks that come with solar panels, which could include water intrusion where the panels are built into the roof and potential fires.
Cudmore said,
In general practice, mechanical equipment, any type of equipment — if they can get away from it, they do not want to put it on the roof of their data center,
“You are talking about billions of dollars inside that data center.”
Rensberger pushed back on Cudmore’s stated reasons to not include solar on the site plan, stating that there are ways to attach solar panels without penetrating the roof using straps and adhesives. He said he had never heard fire risk as a reason to avoid rooftop solar.
Rensberger asked,
Are you seriously saying that risk of fire — on a non-combustible commercial roof where you have retardant applied to the bottom, monitoring and suppression — is too big of a risk?
Rensberger ultimately included in his motion to approve the site plan for Bauxite II a condition that Rowan furnish a study by a third-party expert regarding the hazards of solar panels on data center roofs.
While there were no solar panels depicted on the actual site plans for Bauxite II and III, Wu said the company plans to purchase a 13-acre parcel on the Quantum Loophole campus for potential use as a community solar array.
He said Rowan is working to find a third-party community solar developer, who would in turn be responsible for securing the necessary approvals for the solar array.
Wu told the Planning Commission,
We really wanted to put solar in someplace to not just placate the commissioners but to also help us achieve our goals of sustainability
Wu said Rowan is also looking into water recharge projects that could be undertaken off-site to counter some of the demand generated by its data centers.
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Planning Commission approves two more Rowan data centers, source
